Home Paramount Pest Control - Falls Church, VA
About us
Dependable, flexible, effective residential pest control, termite control, and moisture control services.
Business highlights
Services we offer
Residential pest, moisture control & home inspection, termite, wildlife control.
Amenities
Free Estimates
Yes
Accepted Payment Methods
- CreditCard
Number of Stars | Image of Distribution | Number of Ratings |
---|---|---|
48% | ||
11% | ||
19% | ||
7% | ||
15% |
He told me that my next door neighbor had already been using their service which explained the dead rats. They had eaten the poison from their baits and wandered over to my place to die. He said that was how they got more and more business. In order to determine how much to charge me, he called his office to ask how much he had charged my neighbor. Right in front of me! Even said, "I can't charge you any less than I charged them in case you talk." I am normally an intelligent person but apparently my fear of rats far outweighs my intelligence and sanity and I agreed to pay $695 and signed a contract for $100 every 2 months. The bi-monthly payment covers a bi-monthly visit from Lamar (the ONLY good thing about this disreputable company - he is always kind and helpful and on time and has nothing at all to do with the actions of the inspector and moronic managers), who refills the bait boxes and does an exterior spray for bugs.
After a few months we realized that the rats were still around and we had to do something on our own. We took down a shed that the inspector said they would be living under (they weren't) and filled in under the front porch with cement (which Lamar helpfully suggested because that is where they were living and breeding). Since then, we have not seen any evidence of rodents. 6 months into our contract, I called to cancel the service. I was thanked and told the service was cancelled and thought that was the end of it until I received a bill for $300 for the remainder of the contract. I understand that I signed a contract but hadn't realized when and assumed that when I cancelled someone would have told me there would be a $300 balance. I obviously didn't want to pay for work that I didn't have done and I found the contract and reread it and it made me really angry and I felt really violated so I called and asked to speak to the manager. That ended up being Art Bernardo.
Art Bernardo. I explained to him that in retrospect I felt I had been completely taken advantage of and I wanted him to explain to me what the initial $695 charge was for. He couldn't. He kept repeating the same thing over and over again, saying that I had agreed to the fee at the time and that it covered the work done. I told him that I understood the $100 every other month was for spraying and bait refill but I wanted to know what EXACTLY the $695 was for and how EXACTLY his inspector was able to calculate a cost. I told him I believed there should be some formula that they used to determine how much to charge. I told him the inspector called in front of me and TOLD me he was just going to charge me the same amount that he had charged my neighbor. I told him the initial inspection took no more than10 minutes and the installation of the bait boxes took no more than 15 minutes (my entire property is only 6000 square feet) and $695 was far in excess of what they should have charged. We went back and forth for about a half an hour. I continually told him that I wanted to see IN WRITING how inspectors determine cost. He would not comply. I told him I felt they were an unscrupulous company and I really just didn't want to do business with them any longer. I just wanted to break the contract. I said I would report them to the Better Business Bureau and give them a terrible review on Angie's List and any other review site I could find and he finally said he needed to talk to someone and would call me back.
Art Bernardo. He called back on my other line 5 minutes before he was leaving for the day. I didn't hear the message until 10 minutes later and he was gone. It was a Friday. When I called back on Monday, he told me there was nothing he could do. We had the same conversation all over again. We spoke a third time, with him forgetting everything and me having to go through the whole rigamarole again. I finally told him I needed to speak to his boss. His response was that he wasn't available but he would give him the message to call me. I was never called. I continued to get bills saying I'd be sent to collections so I finally reinstated the contract. I don't want my credit score to be affected and I was just becoming so anxious about the interactions that it was just easier.
I understand what a contract is and that I signed one. But I felt that I had been in a very vulnerable position and was taken advantage of. There is also the fact that the bait boxes did not stop the rats, our own actions did and I am now paying for a useless service. As well as the fact that the company cannot justify their billing practices. And they are (except for Lamar, the guy actually doing the grunt work) rude and unresponsive. Do Not, under Any circumstances, use this company!!
We had a contract with Home Paramount (originally Paramount Pest Control) since we purchased our house in 1984. Although they did Termite treatment before we moved in, we took only a Carpenter Ant Contract. Every year they would call repeatedly about our "termite contract" and we would remind them that we had only carpenter ant coverage. Once a year we asked them to do a carpenter ant treatment.
This year when I called to arrange a treatment they said we had cancelled the contract in Dec which was not true. I had lots of trouble reaching the manager, Mr Bernardo, and when I finally spoke to him he insisted he could not do a treatment because the contract was cancelled. He acknowledged that they received and cashed our check in August, but still insisted we had no contract. He could not accept the fact that it must have been a clerical error or explain why we would pay an annual fee only to cancel the service. He finally agreed to send someone out to do the treatment but expects me to sign a contract that this is a one time treatment and not an annual contract. Although I have never needed more than one treatment per year, I resent the fact that they are changing the contract mid-year.
I have put in a call to the corporate offices and will hope to speak to someone about the problem. Their administration has been terrible for years but at least in the past I was able to speak to a manager who promised to fix it in the future.
I always believed that they reason there were problems in the past was because our contract was so old and they didn't know how to enter it into their computer system. But I now think that they want to cancel our contract with them and force us to buy a more expensive one. If they want to stop providing services they need to let us know and not cancel our contract after accepting my money. I could not get Mr Bernardo to agree to refund my money so that I could hire another, better pest control company.
I have been using their services for over 20 years now. I get a bill from them from Maryland and the guy who does the work on my house comes from Virginia. The price depends on what is being done. I pay $82 every quarter for regular pest control treatment and I pay around $125 once a year for termite warranty renewal. The insulation they put in has pest control in it and that?s why I got it through the pest control company. They have a local home grown kind of attitude when it comes to their customer service. They provide really good customer service. You feel like they are a local home grown company which they probably are. They are not a national company. Overall, they have been very helpful and accommodating. They even gave me a 20% discount on the insulation work. There were some problems with the scheduling because it was around Christmas time, but it all got worked out and got finished. Their price is definitely excellent. I would use their services in the future too.
Licensing
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